The World's Greatest Books - Volume 4 Part 25

Urania

Camille Flammarion is one of the most remarkable of modern French scientists. Born on February 25, 1842, he was apprenticed at an early age to an engraver, but, attracted by astronomy, he studied so well that, when a lad of sixteen, he was admitted as a pupil to the Paris Observatory. There is no doubt that the great French mathematician, Le Verrier, regarded Flammarion with a certain disdain as more of a poet than an astronomer; but he soon vindicated, by several important discoveries, his t.i.tle to be regarded as a man of science. "Urania," which appeared in 1889, is an excellent example of his ability as a thinker, and of his charm as a writer. The work is hardly a novel, though it is far more popular than many books of fiction. It is really an essay in philosophy dealing with the question of the immortality of the soul; and it has an especial interest for English readers owing to the fact that much in it that seems to be pure fantasy is based on researches undertaken by the British Society for Psychical Research. The plot and the characters are of secondary importance; they are only used for the purpose of ill.u.s.trating certain ideas.

_I.--The Muse of Astronomy_

I was seventeen years old when I fell in love with Urania. Was she a fair, young, blue-eyed daughter of Eve? No; she was an exquisite statue of the Muse of Astronomy, chiselled by Pradier in the days of the Empire. She stood on the mantelpiece in the study of the famous mathematician, Le Verrier, who directed the Paris Observatory, where I was working. At four o'clock in the afternoon my ill.u.s.trious chief used to depart, and I would then steal into his room and sit down before Urania and dream of lovelier worlds than ours, hidden in the infinite s.p.a.ces of the starry sky. Sometimes my friend and companion in studies, Georges Spero, would come and sit beside me; and, inspired by the immortal beauty of Urania, we would let our young and ardent imaginations play over the glories and wonders of the heavens.

"You will be too late for Jupiter," said Le Verrier, entering unexpectedly one evening, and catching me in an att.i.tude of adoration before Urania. "I am afraid you are more of a poet than an astronomer."

The great man of science himself certainly did not love beauty as much as he loved wisdom, for the next day he sold the lovely image of Urania in order to buy an old Chinese astronomical clock. I was almost heartbroken when I entered his room and found that Urania had disappeared. With her had gone the vivifying power of imagination which had trans.m.u.ted the abstruse calculations on which I was engaged into glimpses of heavenly visions of infinite life. With what wild joy then did I see, when I returned home, Urania s.h.i.+ning in all her loveliness on my own mantelpiece. Knowing my love for the beautiful figure of the muse, Georges Spero had bought it back from the watchmaker to whom Le Verrier had sent it, and placed it in my room as a gift.

It was an extraordinary mark of friends.h.i.+p, for Georges loved Urania even more pa.s.sionately than I did. To him she was the personification of everything in life that lifted man above the level of the brute.

Possessing a n.o.bler and finer intellect than mine, he had thrown himself into the study of the problems of the soul with a fury of pa.s.sion and a concentration of thought that almost killed him. Are our souls immortal, or do they perish with our bodies? This was the question that tormented him to madness. One night I found him sitting in his room in the Place du Pantheon with a gla.s.s of poison in his hand.

"This is the quickest road to the knowledge I want," he said, with a smile. "I shall soon know if the soul is immortal."

He had been dissecting a skull; and by his side was a microscope with which he had been studying the grey matter of the brain. Convinced at last of the uncertainty of the positive sciences, he had fallen into violent despair. But Urania was at hand to comfort him, and his mind became calmer and clearer when we ceased to talk about earthly things, and ascended into high regions of philosophic speculation over which the muse of heaven presides.

"Ah, Camille," he exclaimed, "the Uranian way is the best. It is only by studying the heavens that we shall be able to understand this little earth of ours, and the part we play in it. Look at the midnight sky, streaming with the light of infinite suns, and filled with an unending procession of worlds in which the spirit of life clothes itself in an unimaginable variety of forms. This clot of dust on which we live will grow cold, and break and scatter in the abysses of s.p.a.ce. But it is not our home; we are only pa.s.sengers, and when our journey here is done, fairer mansions are waiting for us in the depths of the sky. If I die before you, I will return and convince you of this truth."

Returning to the study of astronomy, Spero built up a system of philosophy which made him, at the age of twenty-five, one of the most famous men in France.

_II.--Love and Death_

By way of relief from his severer work, Georges Spero resolved to go to Norway and study the wild and beautiful phenomena of the Aurora Borealis, and I went with him. One morning, as we were standing on a mountain looking at a magnificent sunrise, I saw a girl climbing a neighbouring peak. She did not perceive us; but when she reached the summit the image of Spero was thrown on a cloud in front of her, by one of those curious plays of sunlight and mist which sometimes occur in hazy, mountainous regions. His fine, austere features and graceful figure were enlarged into a vast, G.o.d-like apparition, with a halo of bright colours s.h.i.+ning like a glory around his head, and a fainter circle of rainbow hues framing his whole form. It was the first anthelia that the lovely girl had seen, and it filled her with wonder and awe.

Theirs was a strange courts.h.i.+p--Spero's and Iclea's. The lovely young Norwegian lady had recently lost her mother, and being, like many of the cultivated women of Northern Europe, somewhat dubious of the dogmas of religion, she had found death a terrible mystery when it was thus brought sharply home to her. She was wandering in the dreadful labyrinth of modern doubt, vainly seeking to forget her trouble in the excitements of mountaineering, when she saw the unearthly apparition of the young French philosopher. A study of his works heightened the feeling of awe with which she already regarded him. At first there was no room for love in the pa.s.sionate desire after knowledge which drew her to him. She was merely a disciple sitting at the feet of the great master. Accompanied by her father, she continued her studies under him when he returned to Paris, and for three months they were bound together wholly by intellectual interest. For several hours every day they studied side by side, and much of Iclea's time was spent in translating papers in foreign languages, bearing on subjects in which Georges was interested.

One morning he arrived earlier than usual, his eyes s.h.i.+ning with joy.

"I have settled the problem," he cried, leaning against the mantelpiece.

"At least," he added, with his usual modesty, "I have settled it to my own satisfaction."

Striding up and down the room, he rapidly sketched out a system of philosophy in which the ultimate truths of modern science were transformed into the bases of religion. Iclea listened to him in silence as he went on to explain the spiritual forces still dormant in the human soul.

"We are still in our spiritual infancy," he said. "It is scarcely four thousand years since mankind began to manifest its higher powers. Our greatest conquests over nature are all of recent date, and they are the work of a few n.o.ble souls who have erected themselves above the animal conditions of life. The reign of brute force is over, and I am certain that as soon as we learn to exercise the powers of our soul we shall acquire transcendental faculties that will enable us to transport ourselves from one world to another."

"That, too, is my belief," said Iclea.

Georges bent over her and gazed into her eyes of heavenly blue through which her very soul was speaking. There was a strange silence, and then their lips met.

For some months I lost sight of my two friends. In the ecstasy of their love they forgot for a while the problems of philosophy which had brought them together. The joys of intellectual communion were submerged and almost lost in the new, strange feeling which crowned and glorified their lives. Hand in hand the lovers wandered about Paris, which had now become to them a city in fairyland. Meeting them one evening on the banks of the Seine, I learned that they were returning to Norway with Iclea's father, and that they were to be married at Christiania on the anniversary of the mysterious apparition on the mountain which had brought them together. Georges was about to resume his interrupted studies of the Aurora Borealis, which he wished to trace to its source by means of a balloon ascent, and Iclea intended to accompany him in his voyage through the air.

To my great regret I was unable to go with them to Norway, as my duties as an astronomer kept me in Paris. I anxiously awaited that extraordinary agitation of the magnetic needle which announces the existence of an Aurora Borealis in Northern Europe. When at last the magnetic perturbation occurred in the observatory, I rejoiced to think that Spero and his bride were floating high, feasting their eyes on the most gorgeous of spectacles.

But suddenly an indefinable feeling of uneasiness came over me, which grew into a dreadful presentiment of disaster. Long before the telegram arrived from Christiania I knew what had happened. Georges and Iclea were dead!

Every reader of the newspapers next morning knew as much as I did. An escape of gas which could not be stopped sent the balloon hurtling to the earth. Spero threw everything movable out of the car in a vain attempt to lighten it and break the force of the descent. The balloon still kept falling; then Iclea, with a wild courage born of love, saved Georges' life by leaping out of the car. Relieved of her weight, the balloon rose up, but Spero had now no wish to live. He jumped out with a wild cry, and his body crashed on the edge of the lake into which Iclea had fallen. There the mortal remains of the two lovers now lie, covered by a single stone. But where were their souls?

One night Georges Spero remembered his promise to me, and returned to earth.

_III.--A Soul from Mars_

Sitting alone on the top of the ancient castle of Montlhery, I was conducting an experiment in optics by means of electrical communications with two a.s.sistants at Paris and Juvisy. I was trying to find out if the rays of different colours in the spectrum travel at the same rate. It was just on midnight before I brought the experiment to a successful conclusion. As I covered up my instruments, some one said, "You would not have brought that off, Camille, if it had not been for me. I gave you the idea of comparing the violet vibrations with the red."

I turned round with a cry of fear. Georges Spero was sitting in the moonlight on the parapet, looking at me with a smile.

"Are you afraid of me, Camille?" he said.

"You, Georges! You!" I stammered. "Is it really you? Keep still, and let me touch you."

I put my hands on his face, and stroked his hair, and felt his body. I could no longer doubt that I had him before me in the actual flesh, but he read my thoughts.

"You are mistaken, Camille," he said. "My real body is asleep on Mars."

"So you still live?" I exclaimed. "You have solved the great problem.

And Iclea?"

"Let us sit here and talk," he replied. "There are many things I want to tell you."

My fears had vanished, and I sat by my beloved friend.

"It seemed to me," said Georges, "that my fall from the balloon knocked me senseless. When I came to, I was lying in the darkness with the ripple of lake-water breaking on my ear. What amazed me was a strange sense of lightness that made me feel I could rise up and float away if I wanted to. Thinking this was a disorder of the mind, I did not attempt to move, but watched with wondering eyes the sky above me. It was lighted by two strange moons. When the day broke, and showed around me a world of unimaginable splendour, I knew the meaning of the two moons and of my strange feeling of lightness. I was a disembodied spirit that had been transported to Mars.

"Do you know, Camille, that the soul is able to choose its mortal covering? This is, at least, the case on Mars. For some time I wandered about in an invisible form, studying the conditions of life there.

Animal strength, I found, counted for nothing. The Martians are an aerial race, with exquisite senses, which respond in a way unknown on earth to spiritual influences. Do you remember I read your thoughts when we first met, and answered them before you spoke? That is one of the Martians' gifts. Finding that these wonderful faculties were better developed in the women of Mars than in the men, I chose the feminine form for my reincarnation."

"And Iclea?" I said.

"Iclea," said Spero, "was re-born in a masculine shape. It was partly because of the mystic attraction that I felt for her that I chose the other form. Neither of us remembered our earthly existence, but a vague yet deep sentiment of our spiritual relations.h.i.+p made me seek her out and unite myself to her. It was your beloved muse Uriana," he added, "who revealed the ties that bound us in our former lives.

"Owing to their superior faculties, the Martians have carried every science to a perfection undreamt of on this earth. In astronomical observations, for instance, they employ a system of telephotography. For thousands of years their instruments have been photographing, on an unending roll of paper, the wild spectacle of terrestrial life.

"One day, as Iclea and I were examining recent photographs, we saw a picture of Paris during the Great Exhibition. Seizing a microscope, we looked at the figures, and recognised ourselves among them. Strange memories stirred within us, and we stared at each other in silent amazement. Suddenly I remembered the sacred words I learnt at my mother's knee. Yes, there were many mansions in our Father's house! The blood-stained planet from which we had escaped was neither the cradle nor the grave of His children.

"Then we wept as we thought of the cruelty, ignorance, misery, and grossness of existence on earth. It was, dear Camille, with no joy that I recollected the promise I had made to you. But, you see, I have carried it out. I wish to convince you, and, through you, all the rest of mankind, that the soul is immortal, and that the earth is only a temporary stage of existence in a spiritual progress in which the whole universe is included."

"But how is it possible for you, Georges," I interrupted, "to appear to me in the body you wore on earth?"

"All this," said Spero, touching his body, "is an illusion. Do you not recollect my saying that only invisible things are real? You do not see me with your eyes, or feel me with your hands, as you think you do. The impression which you have of my presence is born of the influence which my mind is exerting in an invisible way on your mind. Can't you understand? It is a kind of hypnotism. At the present moment, as I have said, I am lying asleep on Mars, but my spirit is in direct communication with yours. The form you see sitting beside you on this parapet is only an illusion of your senses. My soul is speaking to your soul."